Covid-19 has infiltrated two Dunedin hospital wards and possibly also a rural trust hospital.
A patient admitted to Ward 10A at Wakari Hospital on Thursday subsequently tested positive for Covid-19.
In an unrelated incident, the following day a patient who had been in Ward 4C at Dunedin Hospital — the gynaecological inpatients ward — tested positive after being transferred to an unnamed rural trust hospital.
Some of the close contacts of that patient and one other patient in the four-bed unit in which they were being treated in Dunedin then tested positive.
Yesterday morning, two further Ward 4C patients tested positive, which sparked a shut-down of the entire fourth floor of Dunedin Hospital.
Despite stringent infection control protocols several northern hospitals have experienced incidents of Covid getting into wards.
This is a first for the Southern District Health Board but planners said they had expected something like this could happen and had planned accordingly.
Facilities have dual entries and passages, a "red stream" for Covid-positive patients and a "green stream" for those believed to be negative.
"It is becoming increasingly difficult for us to manage the red and green streaming effectively because people with Omicron are often asymptomatic or have very, very mild symptoms," SDHB acting quality and clinical governance solutions director Hywel Lloyd said.
"Even when we do PCR tests and they test negative they can be incubating the disease and develop Covid while they are with us."
All patients on the fourth floor of Dunedin Hospital were tested for Covid-19 yesterday.
The entire floor was then shut down to further admissions and to visitors until it could be established how far Covid had spread in the building.
All staff on the fourth floor were now also working in full personal protective equipment.
Dr Lloyd, who has led the SDHB’s Covid-19 planning, said at this point most hospital services remained unaffected by the Covid scares, but in general terms all areas were under strain due to Covid-related staff absences.
"It is going to have some effect, but what is interesting is that we are seeing a lot of incidental Covid in people who are with us for other reasons.
"Those people then go up to the seventh floor [Dunedin Hospital’s dedicated Covid-19 ward] and it’s been about a 50:50 split between as well as and because of."
The number of people with Covid-19 in southern hospitals has risen steadily in recent days, from 18 on Friday to 22 on Saturday and 27 yesterday.
The Wakari case happened in Ward 10A, a home for severely intellectually disabled people.
As well as the initial case, two other inpatients have tested positive to Covid-19.
"All three patients are reasonably well with their infections while staff and the rest of the ward’s inpatients are undertaking further surveillance testing."
Over the weekend, a further 2064 community cases of Covid-19 were confirmed in Otago and Southland, 1224 on Saturday and a further 840 yesterday.
Nationally, 18,514 cases were confirmed on Saturday and 12,020 cases yesterday: case numbers tend to be lower on Sunday and Monday as fewer people test and report results over the weekend.
A further 19 deaths of people who had Covid-19 were reported over the weekend: none were in the southern region.
